“Today, I’m authorizing a 100% increase in personnel to bolster the impact of this proven operation, as well as authorizing targeted surges to crack down on crime in the city,” Newsom said in the statement. “Working alongside our local, state, and federal partners, we’re committed to cleaning up San Francisco’s streets.”
Thus far, the operation has seized more than 8.1 kilograms of fentanyl, reportedly enough to kill more than 4 million people, according to the statement.
“CHP’s recent results in San Francisco are nothing short of extraordinary—in just six weeks, the agency’s hardworking officers seized enough fentanyl to potentially kill the city nearly three times over, multiple firearms, and stolen goods,” Newsom said in the announcement.
In addition to assisting city patrol officers, the operation includes a team of analysts focused on mapping crime syndicates and providing advanced metrics to aid investigations.
Plagued by understaffing issues exacerbated by rising criminal activity, the San Francisco Police Department is reportedly overwhelmed, with some officers being discouraged because of the city’s catch-and-release policies.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott welcomed the support of the state, acknowledging the severity of the problem in the joint announcement.
“Our residents, business owners, and visitors to our city deserve to feel safe, and we are making progress in disrupting the drug markets that are causing so much misery on our streets,” he said. “Working collaboratively with the CHP, we’ve seized an unprecedented amount of fentanyl and other deadly narcotics in recent weeks, and I look forward to building on our success.”
The streets of downtown San Francisco offer the most visible impact of the fentanyl crisis, with ubiquitous drug use seen in what some describe as deplorable conditions, as homeless encampments and vagrancy spread throughout the Tenderloin District—located downtown adjacent to Union Square—and surrounding areas.
San Francisco Fire Department spokespersons reported to the California Assembly’s newly formed Select Committee on Fentanyl, Opioid Addiction, and Overdose Prevention during its first gathering in May about having to respond to multiple overdose emergency calls every day, with an average of two deaths occurring on the streets every 24 hours.
“I don’t even bring my family into the city anymore, and we used to love to come over and eat and shop, just enjoy the area,” Jesse Garcia—an electrician living in the East Bay and working in San Francisco—told The Epoch Times. “I don’t want my young kids seeing the people out here looking like zombies. It’s disgusting, and it’s not safe for families.”
Faced with several dilemmas stemming from the public’s perceived lack of public safety in the city stemming from homelessness, open-air drug use, and high levels of theft—including retail stores fleeing the downtown area and record levels of office space vacancy impacting the economy—Mayor London Breed voiced her appreciation for the state’s help.
“Over the last several weeks, we’ve welcomed the California Highway Patrol and National Guard working collaboratively alongside our local agencies to disrupt the drug trafficking and drug markets harming our neighborhoods,” Breed said in the joint statement. “To be successful in the long term, we need to sustain and expand this work at the local, state, and federal levels.”
Federal courts have proven more effective than state and local ones in terms of convicting distributors and some dealers linked to the deaths of individuals, based on court filings this year, levying multiyear sentences on numerous occasions.
Seemingly fed up with a lack of action from leaders, voters recalled Chesa Boudin—formerly the city’s progressive district attorney—in 2022 by a wide margin.
Several district attorney’s offices throughout the state report feeling hampered by what they say are limited options for prosecuting those caught with less than one kilogram of the drug.
Resistance in the Legislature to entertain proposals related to fentanyl sentencing enhancements is an issue that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken exception to, as multiple bipartisan efforts to bolster prosecutorial playbooks were denied earlier this year.
One measure that’s currently still being considered, Assembly Bill 701—a bipartisan bill introduced by Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez, a Democrat, enhancing penalties for possession of at least one kilogram of fentanyl—passed the Senate Public Safety Committee on June 27, but members reserved their right to oppose the legislation on the floor, as some said they believe that increasing prison sentences won’t improve the overdose epidemic.
Complicating matters are the cheap and easy fentanyl manufacturing methods criminal organizations have mastered and the lethality of the substance, with two milligrams—only a few grains—being potentially deadly, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
The drug is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine.
Nearly 29,000 pounds of fentanyl was seized in California in 2022, representing an amount that could kill most of the people on the planet—approximately 6.5 billion, based on DEA calculations.
According to the most recent statistics from the California Department of Public Health, approximately 115 people die every week in the state as a result of the synthetic opioid.
Investigators report that many victims are unknowingly poisoned, as the drug is odorless, tasteless, and is often found hidden in counterfeit pharmaceutical products and in street drugs.
